“I don’t fucking want innovation,” the ex-employee recalls CEO Mark Pincus saying. “You’re not smarter than your competitor. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers.”
Citing industry sources, The Wall Street Journal reported today that Zynga CEO Mark Pincus, along with his top executives, decided last year as they were preparing for an initial public offering (IPO) that they had given out too much stock to employees. But rather than accept that reality, the executives reportedly tried a different tactic: demand employees give back not-yet-vested stock or face termination.
So either the anonymous sources of the San Francisco Weekly and The Wall Street Journal are utterly full of shit, or this guy is a bona fide sociopath. Right?
After two years of on-then-off-then-on development, my new project has gone live.
Lookwork is an RSS reader for visual content. It’s a bit odd and apparently RSS is dead but a lot of my favorite things are dead so that won’t stop us.
Dozens of people in the fields of design, illustration and photography have been using Lookwork for an awfully long time and call it indispensable. If you work in the creative industries — or are just obsessed with beauty and awesomeness — I hope you’ll give the demo a look. You can also see what a few of my favorite people like Deroy Peraza, Jon Contino, Simon Goetz and yours truly take in every day.
guy:
The priest asked the man why he lay there in the square and if perhaps he could be convinced to leave. The man said he had eaten a thing which he should not have and he could not move because the world was revealed to him in its evil and in its beauty. That if he moved he might fall into the sky and never return. The priest assured him that it was not possible to fall into the sky and that an earthly cure of ginger and peppermint would surely calm his digestion. The man asked could God make a taco so terrible even He could not eat it. The priest considered this and said no this was not possible and to think so was a sin. The man was silent for some time. Then he said that he had eaten such a taco and that it tasted of bootblack and horsefeed. That if this taco was under God’s dominion then surely all other great evils must be as well. And then the man took the halfeaten and greaseblackened taco from his coatpocket and thrust it at the priest like a broken sword. Eat it, he said. Eat it or be damned.
via the listenerd
Had multiple episodes this past summer where I locked my bike in Manhattan and spaced where. 3+ hours of wandering in circles searching, always turned up untouched though.
Nice Buster Keaton vibe here. more
The ridiculously talented Andrea Sparacio has created the literary Halloween costume of the year. I am in love!
This looks amazing in person.
you won Halloween
If Apple does introduce an AppleTV App Store for video content (as Kottke and Gruber are predicting), that also opens up the possibility for games, effectively turning the AppleTV into a console.
Last I heard, the video chip in the AppleTV was about the same as in the iPad, which has been described as not quite PS3-quality, but much better than the PS2 and the Wii. And HD. So there’s that.
An executive who worked at both Apple and Microsoft described the differences this way: “Microsoft tries to find pockets of unrealized revenue and then figures out what to make. Apple is just the opposite: It thinks of great products, then sells them. Prototypes and demos always come before spreadsheets.”
I’m no expert, but is this not sort of the difference between supply-side and Keynesian economics? e.g. The supply-sider thinks the path to success is being the most efficient player in existing markets, and the Keynesian is more focused on what people actually want?
Have you read Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain? It’s a thirty-year-old book that uses certain insights into neuroscience to teach the reader how to draw. Following a few basic exercises, anyone — no really, anyone, even you — can execute a drawing at least this decent.
DRSB explains how the brain thinks in terms of symbols, which inadvertently blocks people from actually seeing what’s in front of them. (It’s a bit like that old/young woman optical illusion.) The book goes on to train the reader to start seeing again. After learning to see, drawing is straightforward.
The Last Psychiatrist believes that, similarly, people use symbols as intellectual crutches when trying to express complex beliefs. Also there’s a bit about Indiana Jones.
You should buy this book. (not my referral link btw)
In general Sony’s engineers seem to have the free hand in designing the prettiest, friendliest, most well-built machines possible. They get to develop advanced technology, or buy it from competitors at any price. At the cutting edge of consumer electronics their design process has the grace and elegance of a tea ceremony.
Their products have a soul.
Then, at a certain point during development, the engineers take their slick, shiny prototype up to the thirteenth floor and leave it on a massive smoked glass table in an dark, empty conference room. They go home silently, and drink sake in a melancholy their wives cannot understand.
Back on the thirteenth floor, a team of crack marketeers emerges and starts handicapping the prototype. They add bloatware that links to unyielding vaporware websites, disable hardware for unlocking in future updates, install seven gigs of designer screen saver ‘introduction’ movies. They disable any meaningful way to use the device without buying into a distributed network of an occult protocol.
Meanwhile the CEO’s stalk each other in bamboo rooftop forests, their katanas gleaming with the blood of intra-corporate informants as they search to battle for supremacy.
At home the engineers try to forget what could have been. At one point they have drank enough sakes to allow themselves to cry a single, desperate tear.
